donor portrait purpose donor portrait purpose

Figure 1.5: John Komnenos and Irene with the Virgin, mosaic in south gallery of the Church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, 111834. @kindle.com emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. They were either depicted as themselves or as the reincarnations of gods, and they were always drawn in profile. The earthly ruler is substituted by a heavenly figure, the result being the typical Byzantine proskynesis contact portrait. Let us reserve ktetor and ktetor portraits for the former group, and supplicant and contact portraits for the latter. From the upright monk in the Melbourne Gospels, who nonetheless inclines toward the Virgin and Child with some intensity, to the apparent abjection of the supplicant in ms. Lavra A 103, to the sincere concern of Theodore at the Kariye Camii (Fig. 2, fol. All told, then, by this combination of components, there is no question but that Christ is the dominant figure, yet the two emperors still appear formidably authoritative. One of the features that we have already seen of contact portraits is that they are usually commissioned by supplicants seeking mercy in relation to final judgment. This is a deeply orthodox emperor, but not a humble one. Portrait painting is almost as old as painting itself and can be traced back to archaeological finds from the Fertile Crescent. Weve all heard of Gwendolyn Giver the stereotypical supporter (just in case you havent, shes female, aged 45 to 60 and loves to give, preferably with cash). Art is a rich area in which to study psychological life through the lens of cultural psychology. Donor portraits do just that. From: donor portrait in The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance Subjects: History Early Modern History (1500 to 1700) Reference entries On the other, they seek to retain the elevated connotations of imperial iconography, and thus do not wish to submit the emperor to the power drain that a conventional supplicant undergoes in a true donor portrait. A painting in the Catacombs of Commodilla of 528 shows a throned Virgin and Child flanked by two saints, with Turtura, a female donor, in front of the left hand saint, who has his hand on her shoulder; very similar compositions were being produced a millennium later. And he is certainly no supplicant. These are a great place to start, and if you want to dig deeper theres no shortage of online platforms or providers that can offer a deep-dive into your analytics. In non-imperial scenes such as the one showing Theodore Metochites, there is a standard dichotomy of the weak and the strong, the donor usually appearing in a deliberately submissive position, requesting a favor from the holy figure. An Old Babylonian seal in the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago represents the sun-god Shamash on the right, and a worshiper bearing a kid in his left arm, his right arm raised in prayer (17001530 BC, Fig. As you start to find the basic shape, dig into the details and look for commonalities across your supporter base. 7 C. Stornajolo, Miniature delle omelie di Giacomo Monaco (cod. The terms are not used very consistently by art historians, as Angela Marisol Roberts points out,[1] and may also be used for smaller religious subjects that were probably made to be retained by the commissioner rather than donated to a church. Andrea Mantegna's Madonna della Vittoria (c. 1496), with Francesco II Gonzaga. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). The purpose of this partnership was to commission the portrait of an historic woman scientist from Rockefeller. The gifts are extended farther in toward the Virgin and Christ in the center of the image. Also in Ravenna, there is a small mosaic of Justinian, possibly originally of Theoderic the Great in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo. Ownership of an object is relinquished, and is transferred to someone else. There are, however, three more scenes that seem to fall rather more definitively into the ambit of imperial donor or contact portraits that require further examination. First Steps is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings In 2019, the university's Women & Science Initiative and Women in Science at Rockefeller came together in what is now called the Women & Science Portrait Initiative. 2v of this manuscript, the emperor Alexios Komnenos is represented approaching a seated figure of Christ, extending a manuscript before him in what seems to be a clear gesture of donation (Fig. The five children holding crosses had died; the two in black-trimmed white garments apparently before the painting was done, on the others the crosses were probably added later. Portraits allowed monarchs to not only record their likeness, but shape their image as a ruler. Seriously. donor portrait However, there are also other elements in the image that militate against it being defined as a true donor portrait. The 6th-century mosaic panels in the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna of the Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora with courtiers are not of the type showing the ruler receiving divine approval, but each show one of the imperial couple standing confidently with a group of attendants, looking out at the viewer. the only contingency they did not envisage was what actually occurred, that their faces would survive but their names go astray. Hostname: page-component-75b8448494-jf2r5 In the discussion above we have been concerned with images that, although initially seeming to represent a ruler making a donation to a holy figure, on closer inspection were better labeled as quasi donor portraits or ktetor portraits. New York: Pantheon, 1966. In Florence, where there was already a tradition of including portraits of city notables in crowd scenes (mentioned by Leon Battista Alberti), the Procession of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli (145961), which admittedly was in the private chapel of the Palazzo Medici, is dominated by the glamorous procession containing more portraits of the Medici and their allies than can now be identified. 1.7). Rutgers the State University of New Jersey October 1619, 2008: Abstracts (n.p. E. Childs (New York: Praeger, 1967), 5658. On the other hand, within a less vibrant artistic tradition the portraits might easily have fallen into formulaic platitudes. They have all the elements of what, at first, appear to be the essential features of a true donor portrait, but these are combined in such a way as to avoid the power imbalance and manifestation of need that are the deliberate and, as we now see, crucial elements of the true donor portrait. The image as a whole seems to be withdrawing from the possibilities of contact established by the earlier scene, and retreating toward standard imperial iconographic tropes. The Portrait in the Renaissance. The image is not built on the binary opposition of power vs. submission, since nobody appears weak within it. III: Codices 604866 (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 193750), 109; P. Canart and V. Peri, Sussidi bibliografici per i manoscritti Greci della Biblioteca Vaticana (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1970), 463. A very common Netherlandish format from the mid-century was a small diptych with a Madonna and Child, usually on the left wing, and a "donor" on the right - the donor being here an owner, as these were normally intended to be kept in the subject's home. Find out more about saving to your Kindle. 1.9). [27], Donor portraits in works for churches, and over-prominent heraldry, were disapproved of by clerical interpreters of the vague decrees on art of the Council of Trent, such as Saint Charles Borromeo,[28] but survived well into the Baroque period, and developed a secular equivalent in history painting, although here it was often the principal figures who were given the features of the commissioner. A very late example of the old Netherlandish format of the triptych with the donors on the wing panels is Rubens' Rockox Triptych of 161315, once in a church over the tombstone of the donors and now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. 1.1).Footnote 2 The second shows the despot Oliver, in the Church of the Holy Archangels at Lesnovo, FYR Macedonia, from 1341 (Fig. What then of the relative power positions of imperial ktetor portraits? [14] The Wilton Diptych of Richard II of England was a forerunner of these. Although she does not deal explicitly with the problem, she follows much the same route as Jnsdttir, stating that He [the donor] was usually depicted holding his gift in his hands, and all of the subsequent examples she gives are of this type.Footnote 5 She thus implicitly sides with the view that only donation iconography images should be called donor portraits. This process may be intensified if the praying beholder is the donor himself. (Boston: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 193439), vol. Finally, to portray oneself consorting with divine figures is to demonstrate the elevated company that one keeps, and not all in society could afford to represent themselves in this way.Footnote 11. the vogue of the collective portrait grew and grew status and portraiture became inextricably entwined, and there was almost nothing patrons would not do to intrude themselves in paintings; they would stone the women taken in adultery, they would clean up after martyrdoms, they would serve at the table at Emmaus or in the Pharisee's house. Learning and logging professional details is a great way to start building out your donor profile and creating a picture that goes beyond headline demographics. The message that emerges is that just as Constantine engaged in a great public work for the benefit of the citizens of the city, so too did Justinian. Gr. The usefulness of this categorization as a heuristic device is demonstrated if we analyze the images involved from a different perspective, one to which many of the images themselves lead us: that of power relations. In these the portrait may adopt a praying pose,[13] or may pose more like the subject in a purely secular portrait. The Justinian scene might, indeed, have looked as though it was only half done. gr. A summary is not available for this content. 1.29).Footnote 42 Here too, the emperor appears in procession, accompanied by religious figures and attendants as he participates in a religious ritual bringing gifts to the gods, but where no holy recipients are represented. 387. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Here are five ways to collect the data you need to get started. A specific example taken from a large range of possibilities is the picture of a supplicant in proskynesis named simply George in the Church of Hagios Stephanos in Kastoria (1338, Fig. This can be seen most clearly in a three-way comparison between these scenes, imperial coronations, and regular (non-imperial) donor contact images. Then there is also the visual proclamation of ones wealth that an image such as that of Theodore achieves to perfection in its representation of his gorgeous clothes and extravagant hat. Often, even late into the Renaissance, the donor portraits, especially when of a whole family, will be at a much smaller scale than the principal figures, in defiance of linear perspective. Here are some of the key pieces of information we think a good donor portrait should include: Demographic information:As a starting point you need to make sure youre capturing all the headline information you can: name, gender, date of birth, a current address, and contact information. Mention has already been made of a distinction that will play a large role in this study, between those that show the lay figures carrying either a church building or a manuscript and those that do not. Consider the following range of scenes. Indeed, below his fingers we are even afforded a glimpse of the folios, represented in a white color, and thus differentiated from the gold of the book cover. See also Sotiriou and Sotiriou, Icnes, vol. They dont have to be an actual image, but they do need to conjure oneto consolidate everything you know about your donors, give them personality and form. 1.10). Figure 1.8: Emperor Alexios Komnenos, Panoplia Dogmatica, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican, gr. On the subject of imperial power, see, amongst a vast bibliography, F. Dvornik, Early Christian and Byzantine Political Philosophy, 2 vols. Here, each emperor clearly extends to the Virgin and Child the object that he holds.Footnote 14 The image shows none of the hesitations that we have seen earlier. It thus places emphasis on an almost legal aspect of possession. [9] Another tradition which had pre-Christian precedent was royal or imperial images showing the ruler with a religious figure, usually Christ or the Virgin Mary in Christian examples, with the divine and royal figures shown communicating with each other in some way. The purpose of donor portraits was to memorialize the donor and his family, and especially to solicit prayers for them after their death. [21] In narrative scenes they began to be worked into the figures of the scene depicted, perhaps an innovation of Rogier van der Weyden, where they can often be distinguished by their expensive contemporary dress. Here we should clarify that the expression donor portrait as it is employed in the title of this book and in prior instances up to this point, is used as an umbrella term, referring generically to all the iconographic types so far seen. Sometimes the sitters beauty or demeanor is emphasized, as in Nicholas Hilliards miniature portrait of a young man (35.89.4) with luxuriant curls and a straightforward gaze. Position Summary and Purpose: The Accountant will primarily be responsible for ensuring the effective and efficient accounting management of organization, including government reports, donor and non-program funds. The Rijksmuseum employed an AI to repaint lost parts of Rembrandts The Night Watch. Heres how they did it. See also Radoji, Serbischen Kunst, 81. As you start to find the basic shape, dig into the details and look for commonalities across your supporter base. As our Marcus Aurelius example demonstrates, when conquered peoples kneel before the Roman emperor in submission, they are still relatively dignified, with backs and heads upright (see Fig. These images share some elements of the contact-laden donation of Theodore, but ultimately have more in common with coronation iconography. Considering all that has been said about the desire for contact, it should come as no surprise to find that this is the last of such scenes in Byzantine art. Here are five ways to collect the data you need to get started. Figure 1.18: Worshiper, deities, and god, impression of cylinder seal (Old Akkadian Worship Scenes), Old Akkadian, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, c. 23502200 BC. If they are on different sides, the males are normally on the left for the viewer, the honorific right-hand placement within the picture space. And, as we will see shortly, ktetor portraits also differ in other ways from contact portraits. Figure 1.26: George of Antioch before the Virgin, mosaic, originally probably in narthex, Church of the Martorana, Palermo, c. 1140. V, no 213. An example is Robert Campins Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece) (56.70) of about 142732, in which the man and woman in the left wing have the specificity characteristic of portraiture. The Church Father closest to Alexios, St. Dionysios the Areopagite, extends a scroll toward the emperor the front edge of the scroll clearly overlaps the painted frame of the image who lifts a hand to receive it. 41 Von Simson, Sacred Fortress, 2729. 1.11).Footnote 18. Yet, even had it been done during Justinians lifetime, there would have been no less of that historical awareness, because the image represents two events (the construction of the city walls and the church) and two personalities themselves divided by several hundred years, Constantine himself having died in 337. This is imperial iconography at its purest. 1162) e dellevangeliario greco Urbinate (cod. In family groups the figures are usually divided by gender. Portraits of lay supplicants before a holy figure are found the length and breadth of the Byzantine world and its sphere of influence, and at all times. Instead, his bearing is filled with authority, and, as is so often the case, the scene as a whole resorts to a series of formal devices to prevent any lessening of it. Gr. In these the portrait may adopt a praying pose,[14] or may pose more like the subject in a purely secular portrait. Instead, the sacrifice itself has been suppressed, and has been re-figured as a direct, immediate donation. [12] In subsequent centuries bishops, abbots and other clergy were the donors most commonly shown, other than royalty, and they remained prominently represented in later periods. Follow these and use them to create sub-groups and start segmenting your audience. 387; Vatican, BAV, Vat. Imagine, your online, direct debit and payroll donations, website analytics, email campaign engagement and social media statsallautomatically input into your CRM databasewith quick-click reporting giving you a 360Oview of data in a matter of minutes. 20 Tomekovi-Reggiani, Portraits et structures sociales.. 1.21).Footnote 31 Here, we have a representation of Hadrian (although his head was later reworked to resemble the emperor Constantine) on the right of the image, extending his hand over an altar, in the process of sacrificing to the goddess Diana. Would it make a difference to your nonprofits communications? Second Preliminary Report. 13 The Vatican manuscript under discussion here is one of two imperial commissions of the Panoplia still extant, the other being Mosq. In the Early Middle Ages, a group of mosaic portraits in Rome of Popes who had commissioned the building or rebuilding of the churches containing them show standing figures holding models of the building, usually among a group of saints. From the 15th century Early Netherlandish painters like Jan van Eyck integrated, with varying degrees of subtlety, donor portraits into the space of the main scene of altarpieces, at the same scale as the main figures. This re-figuring of the sacrifice represents a major conceptual shift, and opens the way toward our contact donor portraits. ), A GreekEnglish Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). The conclusions reached, therefore, apply specifically to this time-period, although many will apply to some degree to the fewer images from earlier time-periods as well. Before you begin asking legacy donors for their story, you'll need to decide how you'll use it. In a sense, the Justinian panel remains the impossible ideal of imperial religious donation: to give the gift, yet not come off as second best. 680850). Especially popular became the sub-genre of group portraits. The panel is also the subject of a study by E. Dimitriadou, The Lunette Mosaic in the Southwest Vestibule of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople: A Reconsideration, Ph.D. thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art (2010). Figure 1.11: Young boy and man approaching S. Demetrios, mosaic on west wall, Church of Hagios Demetrios, Thessalonika, before 620. Each pursues the goal of contact in very dissimilar ways, and each functions differently within its own economy of belief. 2) Dutch portraiture. Visual documentation includes donor portraits (images where the features of the patron are included in the work), inscriptions, coats of arms, and other imagery that represents the family or the community of the person or people paying. The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance . While any kind of art can be studied within cultural psychology, in the current piece we argue that an art form known as the donor portrait, and more particularly a subcategory thereof known as the contact portrait, visually depicts core aspects of our psychological lives that constitute matters of . 66 in J. Boardman, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, 10 vols. Instead, they turn away from the holy figures, outward, toward the spectator. Rogier van der Weyden, Deposition, c. 1435 ( Prado, Madrid) 5 I. Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, Portraits and Portraiture: Donor Portraits, in A. Kazhdan (ed. Yet it is also the case that even within the group of contact portraits, there are still distinctions to be drawn between the donation and non-donation iconographies. A donor portrait or votive portrait is a portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image, or a member of his or her, family. Rather, the difference seems to reside in where the attention of the Greek sacrificants is directed. As is to be expected, almost nothing has survived from the iconoclastic period, the one exception perhaps being an icon of St. Irene with a very small supplicant in proskynesis beside her, dated by Weitzmann to the eighth or ninth century (Monastery of St. Katherine, Sinai, Fig. 26 J. Oates, Babylon (London: Thames & Hudson, 1986), 175. (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1959), vol. More immediate forerunners of our portraits are also be found in the scenes of sacrificial offerings in ancient Greece and Rome. [28], Although donor portraits have been relatively little studied as a distinct genre, there has been more interest in recent years, and a debate over their relationship, in Italy, to the rise of individualism with the Early Renaissance, and also over the changes in their iconography after the Black Death of the mid-14th century.[29]. Although none have survived, there is literary evidence of donor portraits in small chapels from the Early Christian period,[10] probably continuing the traditions of pagan temples. 40 For more on proskynesis in Byzantine art, amongst a large bibliography, see A. Cutler, Transfigurations: Studies in the Dynamics of Byzantine Iconography (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975), 5391; L. Brubaker, Gesture in Byzantium, Past and Present 4 (2009): 3656; and Hillsdale, Byzantine Art and Diplomacy, 12633. It should also be borne in mind, however, that as much as the images fit into these categories, they all have the dual agenda, which means that each also has something of the other categories within it. Further, once we undertake a careful scrutiny of the images, we might also ask whether these two terms that we have been discussing, donor and ktetor, are themselves the most relevant categories to apply to the range of images we have so far seen. Not sure if youve got the right information to work with? Portraiture. Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece), Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement, Tommaso di Folco Portinari (14281501); Maria Portinari (Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, born 1456), Filippo Archinto (born about 1500, died 1558), Archbishop of Milan, Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (15141574), With his Armor by Filippo Negroli, Portrait of a Young Man, Probably Robert Devereux (15661601), Second Earl of Essex, Princess Elizabeth (15961662), Later Queen of Bohemia, Portrait of a Woman, Probably Susanna Lunden (Susanna Fourment, 15991628), The Artist's Mother: Head and Bust, Three-Quarters Right, James Stuart (16121655), Duke of Richmond and Lennox, Don Gaspar de Guzmn (15871645), Count-Duke of Olivares, Rubens, Helena Fourment (16141673), and Their Son Frans (16331678), Everhard Jabach (16181695) and His Family, The Nude in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, The Nude in Western Art and Its Beginnings in Antiquity, Painting the Life of Christ in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, The Birth and Infancy of Christ in Italian Painting, The Crucifixion and Passion of Christ in Italian Painting, Peter Paul Rubens (15771640) and Anthony van Dyck (15991641): Paintings, Burgundian Netherlands: Court Life and Patronage, Mannerism: Bronzino (15031572) and his Contemporaries, Painting in Oil in the Low Countries and Its Spread to Southern Europe, Paintings of Love and Marriage in the Italian Renaissance, Patronage at the Later Valois Courts (14611589), Prague during the Rule of Rudolf II (15831612), Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle, Sixteenth-Century Painting in Emilia-Romagna, Sixteenth-Century Painting in Venice and the Veneto. The Antioch and Byzantine scenes, however, are functioning in a transformative, less earth-bound, mode that might be better called symbolic or metaphoric (which, as mentioned, we will investigate further in Chapter 4). Portrait of a Female Donor, c. 1455 Not on View Medium oil on panel Dimensions overall: 41.8 x 21.6 cm (16 7/16 x 8 1/2 in.) 1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.21, 1.22, 1.23). This relation of the lay figures to the primal force that is Christ in terms of power is a key factor not only in the coronations, but also in non-imperial donor portraits; yet it also makes the scenes in some senses iconographic opposites. Making assumptions, using stereotypes, and sweeping generalizations are no substitute for actual knowledge. The making of a portrait typically involved a simple arrangement between artist and patron, but artists also worked on their own initiative, particularly when portraying friends and family (18.72; 1981.238; 1994.7). Figure 1.1: King Dragutin, Queen Katelina, and King Milutin, painting in inner narthex, Church of St. Achilleos, Arilje, Serbia, 1296. Reading the images together, then, they seem to be declaring that the book from which the emperor reads is grounded upon the writings of this most august group of luminaries. This freshly unearthed image drastically alters the meaning of one of the artists most celebrated works. Feature Flags: { Rulers were the only individuals considered worthy of being immortalized on canvas. Figure 1.7: Church Fathers, Panoplia Dogmatica, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican, gr. See also F. Cimok (ed. Donor portraits appear in altarpieces and are essential parts of devotional diptychs and triptychs; in these smaller works used for worship in the home, a single sitter, a husband and wife, or a donor and his patron saint face a devotional image, such as the Virgin and Child, in an attitude of prayer.